diff -up pcsc-lite-1.6.4/src/winscard_clnt.c.noautostart pcsc-lite-1.6.4/src/winscard_clnt.c
--- pcsc-lite-1.6.4/src/winscard_clnt.c.noautostart	2010-12-12 23:46:43.228293593 +0200
+++ pcsc-lite-1.6.4/src/winscard_clnt.c	2010-12-12 23:52:44.388532774 +0200
@@ -387,79 +387,15 @@ LONG SCardEstablishContext(DWORD dwScope
 	LPCVOID pvReserved2, LPSCARDCONTEXT phContext)
 {
 	LONG rv;
-	int daemon_launched = FALSE;
-	int retries = 0;
 
 	PROFILE_START
 
-again:
 	/* Check if the server is running */
 	rv = SCardCheckDaemonAvailability();
 	if (SCARD_E_INVALID_HANDLE == rv)
 		/* we reconnected to a daemon or we got called from a forked child */
 		rv = SCardCheckDaemonAvailability();
 
-	if (SCARD_E_NO_SERVICE == rv)
-	{
-launch:
-		if (daemon_launched)
-		{
-			retries++;
-			if (retries < 50)	/* 50 x 100ms = 5 seconds */
-			{
-				/* give some more time to the server to start */
-				SYS_USleep(100*1000);	/* 100 ms */
-				goto again;
-			}
-
-			/* the server failed to start (in time) */
-			goto end;
-		}
-		else
-		{
-			int pid;
-
-			pid = fork();
-
-			if (pid < 0)
-			{
-				Log2(PCSC_LOG_CRITICAL, "fork failed: %s", strerror(errno));
-				rv = SCARD_F_INTERNAL_ERROR;
-				goto end;
-			}
-
-			if (0 == pid)
-			{
-				int ret, i, max;
-				char *param = getenv("PCSCLITE_PCSCD_ARGS");
-
-				/* close all file handles except stdin, stdout and
-				 * stderr so that pcscd does not confiscate ressources
-				 * allocated by the application */
-				max = sysconf(_SC_OPEN_MAX);
-				if (-1 == max)
-					max = 1024;
-				for (i=3; i<max; i++)
-					(void)close(i);
-
-				/* son process */
-				ret = execl(PCSCD_BINARY, "pcscd", "--auto-exit", param,
-					(char *)NULL);
-				Log2(PCSC_LOG_CRITICAL, "exec " PCSCD_BINARY " failed: %s",
-					strerror(errno));
-				exit(1);
-			}
-
-			/* father process */
-			daemon_launched = TRUE;
-
-			if (waitpid(pid, NULL, 0) < 0)
-				Log2(PCSC_LOG_CRITICAL, "waitpid failed: %s", strerror(errno));
-
-			goto again;
-		}
-	}
-
 	if (rv != SCARD_S_SUCCESS)
 		goto end;
 
@@ -468,15 +404,6 @@ launch:
 		pvReserved2, phContext);
 	(void)SCardUnlockThread();
 
-	/* SCardEstablishContextTH may fail if the previous pcscd crashed
-	 * without cleaning /var/run/pcscd/pcscd.comm */
-	if (SCARD_E_NO_SERVICE == rv)
-	{
-		retries++;
-		if (retries <= 1)
-			goto launch;
-	}
-
 end:
 	PROFILE_END(rv)